Jan 13 2009
First Impressions ~ Akikan Episode 1
How much the budget was.
I have watched many a travesty in my life time but none have come close to how i feel about Akikan right now. Poor plot, lame overused humor, annoying music, absolutely poor animation - it just doesn’t get any worse than this. While i did have good expectations for Akikan - namely, the design looked good (Girls popping out of soda cans?! Who would have thought!) - the execution was simply not up to par with the rest of the winter season. That being said I probably won’t seriously watch this any more - from what I’ve heard, the second episode seems only worse.
I won’t even begin to wonder about this.
So we begin the episode with our hero Takeru, a jerk if I’ve ever met one, buying a melon-flavour soda from a vending machine on his way home. He’s unlikable, lewd and perverted and says things that make only make the situation worse. He compounds this image by posing naked after his shower and molesting Melon after he releases her from her soda can. Of course, this wouldn’t be a proper harem anime if the girl can’t beat the main character to bits, and Melon does so in spectacular fashion with an immaterial melon fruit that explodes on command. There are also two random fellows who bust into the apartment and exclaim to Takeru about Melon but honestly I had lost interest by then.
Is she laughing at her antennae?!
Now…after all that chaos, we skip ahead to school where we meet random classmates, notably Najimi and Yurika. Najimi is the childhood friend of Takeru and who has a painfully obvious obsession with him (her expressions are rather…unique i must admit) while Yurika, a self-proclaimed Witch and lover of women as her name would suggest, hates him and likes Najimi. Their appearance is brief though. We return back to the apartment and to more drama with Melon who falls sick by being stuck in the cupboard. One kiss later and voila she’s back to normal (she then proceeds to beat the living stuffing out of Takeru for doing so).
So after 20 minutes of this….i can only say one thing. Unimpressed. While there could be alot more done for the production, fault also lies within the story itself. Everything is too stereotyped and predictable. The little development present is weak and unfounded by any real explanation. The music is difficult to like. All in all, an unsatisfactory beginning to a series that showed some promise.
